It is widely practiced to sub-divide wood into a multitude of chips and then to mix such chips with a synthetic resin or plastics material prior to pressing the material into sheets to produce a material commonly known as chip-board. The product is eminently suitable for numerous different structural purposes, furniture manufacture simply being one of many different applications. However, in regions where timber is not freely available, such a material cannot be practically produced and, in view of the extremely high demand made on the timber resources in timber growing regions, such chip-board is, in any event, relatively costly.
Another product which is manufactured, generally by a pressing process is known as composition board, this material being made of vegetable fibers having their origin in timber and once more mixed with a resinous or plastics material and pressed to form a board or other shaped structural member. Such a board is also costly, and even more so than chip-board, in view of the fact that it is a costly procedure to reduce a timber product to fibers whether this be done chemically or mechanically, Again the inherent cost and value of timber plays an important role in maintaining the cost of such composition board relatively high.
It is well known that a number of sources of fibrous vegetable materials have been totally untapped and, indeed, many of such fibrous vegetable materials are discarded, and indeed, are often simply burned in order to dispose of them.
Of particular interest are vegetable fibers which assume the form of straw or bagasse which are generally discarded in view of the high air or gaseous content of the material and the difficulty of reducing such material to extract the fibres which must generally be carried out chemically.
In this specification, it is to be understood that the term "straw" is intended to include the stalks of grasses, grain products such as barley, wheat, rice and indeed even maize stalks as well as other vegetable products such as bagasse having a generally very low bulk specific gravity in view of the inclusion of large quantities of air or other gases in the structure of the stalk or the like.
It is the object of this invention to provide a composition, and structural members made from such composition as well as a method and apparatus for the production of such structural members which usefully employ such straw or bagasse.